FRESHER IPADS, SLICED PRICES

Apple prepares for holiday season amid growing tablet competition

Apple also refreshed its computer lineup. A new, 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is thinner and lighter, Schiller said, adding that the laptop has up to nine hours of battery life, enough to watch the entire trilogy of “The Dark Knight” on one charge. The notebook’s new price is lower: $1,299, compared with $1,499 for the previous version.

A larger MacBook Pro with a 15-inch monitor and 256 gigabytes of storage starts at $1,999, compared with $2,199 for the previous version.

The Mac Pro, a high-end desktop computer aimed at what Apple calls “power users,” will be available in December for $2,999.

The company also said that its latest computer operating system, Mavericks, is available for free.

“Between the iPad and iPhones, I think they’ll have a monster holiday season,” Bajarin said.

Apple also gave updated statistics related to some of its other products. The company said that nearly two-thirds of its mobile devices are running iOS7, the revised operating system it released in September. Twenty million people have listened to iTunes Radio about a month after its release.

Apple shares fell less than 1 percent Tuesday to close at $519.87 in New York, leaving the stock down 2 percent for the year, compared with a 23 percent increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.